A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Orange Cranberry Bundt Cake

I baked this Orange Cranberry Bundt Cake as dessert when a couple of  good friends came over to dinner.  In full disclosure, not only did they come to dinner, they brought dinner.  I needed a special dessert to stand up to Janell and Jerry's wonderful lasagna, which we've had before and knew would be delicious treat.   However, did I get a photo of it? No. Did I forget to try to wheedle her recipe out of her? Yes.  Another time.

But I digress. I was talking about Orange Cranberry Bundt Cake.  Wanted something citrus to offset the richness of the pasta but nice and sweet as an ending note to the meal. This works quite well.  The orange and cranberries are tart in a sweet velvety, almost pound cake-like texture.  Perfect with a glass of milk to catch up with old friends over.

The cake is a simple straightforward two bowl method, well, two bowls and a cutting board when you count the fruit. Preparation is creaming the wet ingredients, followed by adding the dry ingredients, and stirring in the cranberries.   The most time consuming part is the zesting the oranges and chopping the cranberries up a bit.  The cranberries are then tossed with a little flour to help keep them suspended in the batter, instead of racing to the bottom. The only "odd" addition is a bit of corn starch to help lighten up the batter a bit and create a finer crumb.

Baked Pork Chops and Apples with Brown Sugar Glaze

 

I have a confession. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Pinterest recipes.  I have made a lot of recipes that claim to be "the best ever!" and "only 3 ingredients!"  and have been sorely disappointed time and time again. But once in awhile I come across a recipe that doesn't boast anything and ends up being so tasty it makes its way into our regular recipe rotation.  This is one of those recipes.  Very simple (more than 3 ingredients, though!) and easy to put together, it tastes like something I slaved over.  Gene's response was "smells great--looks fancy!".  Later, while eating, he said "Oh, yeah. This works!"  I think this will be one I teach Gene to make for my sleeping days (I'm a nightshifter).  We will definitely be making it again and again!

Click, for the Marinated Chopped Vegetable Salad recipe.

 

Blueberry Thunder Muffins from Persimmon Hill Berry Farm

  For those of us lucky enough to live in the southwest Missouri Ozarks, yes I am prejudiced!, we have access to great berry places like the Persimmon Hill Berry, Fruit, and Mushroom Farm.  And I was lucky enough to have an Auntie who shared with me a baggy of blueberries, a couple of wonderful muffins, and the fabulous recipe from the farm.

I seem to be on a bundt cake kick this year, she said chuckling.  Well, in my defense...Okay, I have no defense but I really like bundt cakes. They look pretty and taste yummy without being high maintenance like layer cakes.  They're the cake friend you invite over for dinner who doesn't need to be impressed because they love you just they way you are and you know you love them.  You know what I mean? 

Check out Persimmon Hill's web site for directions, picking seasons, gourmet products, and additional recipes.

Apple Pie Old-Fashioned Oats in the Rice Cooker

I love oatmeal. I've always loved oatmeal.  No offense to those who love the little packets with the bits of dried fruit in it that you make with hot water but I love "REAL" oatmeal, the kind you can really sink your teeth into, that stays with you for hours, that's a total pain in the butt to cook because you have to do it on the stove.  I did try to make it in the microwave once.  Once.  I think it took me a week to clean all the oatmeal "glue" gunk out of the nuker.

I have two solutions: 1) small slow cooker, the kind you would put an appetizer dip for a party in, or 2)  the rice cooker.  Both are super easy but the rice cooker wins hands down, to me.  All the ingredients get thrown in together and when the lights turns off, the oatmeal is done. Voila!

Greek Do Nothing Pineapple Coconut Cake

 OMG, Auntie Miranda made this cake for cousin James' birthday dinner, our theme being "Greek", and it was absolutely divine!  She said it was very quick and easy to put together, which is a definite plus, and the recipe writer states that it only gets better with a day or two, and can freeze well. I believe all of those things and will definitely be making this again and again.  Two thumbs up from the whole family--thumbs up since our mouths were busy eating this awesome cake!

Other Greek Recipes from James' birthday dinner:

Ina Garten's Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna)

Greek Dinner Salad with Easy Homemade Greek Vinaigrette 

Nannie's Banana Pudding for Gene

 

Redneck Auntie's Cape Codder AKA "Don't Judge Me, Princess"

What do you do when you only have moonshine soaked cranberries, off brand powdered no-calorie lemonade, and nary a clean glass glass in the house?  Make Redneck Auntie Cape Codder AKA "The Don't Judge Me"

Junior's Midnight Moon moonshine is a family business based on Junior Johnson's original North Carolina moonshine recipe from the mid-1800's.  The jar and label caught my eye at the grocery store the other day and demanded I bring it home to play.  Okay, I'm as friendly as it is, and it's happy in my home and tummy.

Just for the few people who may not realize it....while it is a delicious cocktail, my calling it "Redneck Auntie" is a joke so if you feel the need to take it seriously and be offended, I won't necessarily feel the need to publish your comment.   

My 17-year-old niece may give me hell on Facebook for using "HER"  princess glass, but my older niece, who's only months away from drinking legally is going to LOVE this.  I may even have to surrender the glass to her for her birthday (if Sydney will allow it).

Off to have another sippy cup of Redneck Auntie.

Summer Porridge aka Yogurt Oats

 

When I first saw this recipe, called "summer porridge", "yogurt oats", or "overnight oatmeal", I honestly thought it sounded gross but so many people were enthusiastic on Pinterest and other places on the web that I knew I had to give it a chance. It's not like I'm not an adventurous eater anyway, and with these ingredients I knew that at the very least it would be very good for me. (I just needed to check it out to see if it was "good" in the concept of "good & good for you".)

Guess what? It's my favorite way to make oatmeal now.  Hot oatmeal in the winter is filling and somehow defines cold weather for me, but the summer? Not so much.  Now I have a summer oatmeal to enjoy and start off the day with a nice healthy meal that keeps me going.  And more than just breakfast, it's now included in my lunchbox almost every time I go to work as my go-to healthy mid-night snack that keeps me going until 0700.

This healthy habit plays off another of my new favorite healthy habits:  Sangria Water, where I fill a pitcher with filtered water and fruit of all kinds and let it soak overnight, giving me great fruit-tasting water to drink all day and then the fruit to put on my oatmeal for the next day. So the Sangria Water  I made yesterday, with peaches and blueberries, became the peaches and blueberries that topped my yogurt oats this morning for breakfast. It's a win-win, for sure.

 

Get Your 8 Glasses with Taste: Sangria Water

Every time I go to a restaurant and am served water with lemon wedges I always think to myself "Why do I not do this at home?"  It's a lemon wedge: uncomplicated, easy, and takes 15 seconds to cut, but the difference in taste is amazing. We're lucky, here in the Ozarks, to have great tasting water but that tiny extra makes a lot of difference in how much water I drink, so now I do cut lemon wedges at home for our water.... and limes...and grapes, blueberries, peaches, apples, and so on.

I love the Dannon water commercial that says something like "...at some point it occurs to you to replace one can of sugary soda a day with water..."  I always think "How about all or all but one...that would be even better!"

That's what I do now.  Every evening before I go to bed, I put together a quick a pitcher or two of Sangria Water for the next day by combining whatever fruit I have that sounds good to me at the time.  It only takes a few minutes, sitting in the fridge overnight intensifies the flavors, and we wake to a great tasting drink that doesn't have the sugar of juice or soda. At night, after the water has been downed, the fruit is left to munch on as an after dinner snack.

In the pitcher shown, I used a combination of blueberries and peach slices from the freezer, quartered fresh green seedless grapes, and a lime that I halved, reamed, and then dropped the peels in as well.

 

Cauliflower Salad with Grapes

If you like the broccoli raisin salad, you'll like this, it's very similar.  I created it out of desperation. With only two of us in house, it's hard to make batches of things I can't eat by myself if the hubs doesn't care for it.  Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying he's super picky or that he won't try new things, he just doesn't like broccoli.  But. What I have found is that when I substitute cauliflower in some of my favorite broccoli recipes, he loves it as much as I do.

For me, I love both broccoli and cauliflower so this is another great salad with that sweet, sour, creamy, bacon smoky flavor combination I crave.